What are Ad Blockers and How Do they Impact Advertisers?

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Vandita is a passionate writer and IT enthusiast. She is a Computer Lecturer by profession at the University of Delhi. She has previously worked as a Software Engineer with Aricent Technologies. Vandita writes for MarTech Advisor as a freelance contributor.

As the number of Internet users is growing constantly, so is the number of advertisements – which in turn has increased the demand for ad blockers. With Apple introducing ad blocking technology in iOS9 and Google enabling Chrome with ad blocker in 2018, how do you think it is going to impact the advertising industry? Let’s look in this article.

What are Ad Blockers?

An Ad Blocker is a software that filters content and block advertisements on a web page. These work as either stand-alone programs or customized services or extensions in a web browser or an operating system. The software targets ads like pop-ups, banner ads, sticky ads, interstitial ads or auto-playing videos to allow users surf the web without distractions or interruptions in their browsing experience.

How do they work?

Ad blockers use filtering rules to block or hide contents on a web page. A user can customize these rules to block ads and even add rules to add exceptions for the sites that he/she has white-listed.

Communication Blocking: This blocks communication to ad servers/ad resources i.e. every HTTP request is matched to your ad-block filter list and if the URL of the request matches an entry on the list, the resource will be blocked.

Element Hiding: The page is downloaded but certain elements like ‘elements with class = ad’ are hidden (even if they have loaded correctly).

How it impacts various stakeholders?

Users: According to the Chromium Blog (on Google’s Better Ads Experience), “While most advertising on the web is respectful of user experience, over the years we've increasingly heard from our users that some advertising can be particularly intrusive.”

Blocking the ads lets the user focus on the content. Also, a quality ad blocking software can also speed up page load time.

Publishers: Publishers must do a lot of thinking as most of them thrive on advertising to sustain their business. Now the decision lies with the publishers - whether to set reasonable limits to the number of ads - or make the user pay for the content they read (monetarily or in terms of data)! Or, take a drastic (or rather extreme) measure to block the users who use ad blockers.

The advertisers’ perspectives

The opponents of Ad Blockers have a few valid points:

Since the advertisers pay for the impressions, and blockers don’t let the ads get served, it won’t cost them the impressions. But the campaigns will take time to fulfill since impressions will be hard to generate, which will lead to the overall price increase as sale-able inventory will drop.

The ad blockers don’t differentiate between high or low-quality ads, so the ‘good’ ads also get penalized along with substandard ones.

Ad Blocking is bordering on taking away their right or freedom to talk about their product.

Google’s ‘selective’ ad blocking might give too much power to the giant.

Significant ad spend gets wasted – as several hours and big dollars are invested in ads that never see the light of the day.

But the rise of ad blockers could, in fact, change the face of advertising industry (in a better way):

Focus on minimal and better ad experiences: Crafting contextual, compelling and relevant creative may require more energy and time but will appeal to the users and create meaningful experience for them. Non-intrusive ads that do not bombard users will have more appeal and will do away with the need of ad blockers.

Real-time marketing: The marketers should pounce upon the timing when the buyer is in ‘buying frame of mind’. Closing in on all channels to reach out customers when they are about to buy is the best way to market your product.

Reduction in budget waste: Several dollars get invested in low-quality ads that not only degrade UX but your brand value too. Ad Blockers give an opportunity to retrospect where you went wrong to reach your customers - and get rid of the annoying ads.

Consumer-centric branded content: Users have become skilled in tuning out ads from content. The best way to connect and engage with them is to create content around their needs and help them identify how your brand can solve their problems.

Embrace Native Advertising: Native ads provide a better user experience and are more likely to be viewed and shared by the user. Invest in them.

The rise of Influencer Marketing: You can resort to other forms of advertising like influencer marketing. Influencers are a great way to create mass appeal and send an authentic and personal message.

For brands, consumers are the most valuable assets - and an ad is the first touchpoint. A focused, creative and less cluttered advertising strategy will go a long way in establishing a lasting relationship with your customer to ensure enhanced brand image.